Although houses were built by local councils, funding came from the central government so the political decision to no longer do so was taken in Westminster. So the direct answer would be because they cannot afford to, but what motivated the political decisions stripping councils of money to build homes?

Although there's been some recovery in the past 15 years, building 2,000 council homes per year is far below demand. Scotland does a little better, it has 1/10th of the population that England does — per capita, Scotland has usually built more council homes, and are now building around a factor 5 more. Scotland does not have the right to buy, and has had more progressive governments than the UK (which decides for England), so either the right to buy and/or the more progressive governments may be part of the answer to the lack of council house building in England. I'm not sure how the right to buy would lead to lack of council house building; one might equally reason that the privatisation of council houses through the right to buy should necessitate a steady construction of new council homes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Buy. I can only imagine that (appart from the financial restrictions of not allowing the proceeds to build new homes if the council had outstanding debt) it hits hard the social aspect. The city council provides a cheap home to someone who is unemployed or retired, finds that when the tenant has stable work or dies it can not reassign the home to another person in need because the previous tenant or their sons bought it to make a nice profit.
– SJuan76May 22 '16 at 4:19

6

Not a real answer, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with Thatcher and neo-liberalism... you know favouring the efficient private sector instead of heavy centralized state.
– bilbo_pingouinMay 22 '16 at 6:35

1

@bilbo_pingouin Did they really expect the private sector would build affordable homes? Clearly it's not profitable to build new homes in (say) London for people who can't afford market rents.
– gerritMay 22 '16 at 10:12

2

@ThePompitousofLove Local councils, yes. Local housing associations, I don't think so; I'm not quite sure what they are, but I believe they are supposed to be a form of non-profit. Although houses used to be built by local councils, I expect they didn't fund that by locally raised taxes, so the political question is still national.
– gerritMay 23 '16 at 8:33

2

@user4012 Margaret Thatcher, when asked on her biggest achievement, is said to have replied: New Labour. Which meant that the Blair government that followed mostly continued traditional conservative government: continued privatisation of British Rail, participation in the Iraq War, and many other neoliberal policies. It is interesting to note that the Scottish government (more to the left than Blair) will abolish the Right to Buy scheme. I don't know if Scotland are building homes, though (SNP government started after this graph ends).
– gerritMay 23 '16 at 19:09

3 Answers
3

Much of the social housing stock has been sold off under Right to Buy and it will not be built at replacement rate without the removal of significant barriers to new builds. [1]

Successive governments since 1979 have created a set of circumstances that make it economically infeasible to build social housing stock. Governments have tried to compel the building of replacement stock without significantly reversing those economic circumstances.

These include:

secure tenants' Right to Buy local authority housing stock (and former local authority stock owned by housing associations) at large discounts [2], introduced in 1980 in England, Wales and Scotland

LAs have been obliged to set-aside large proportions of capital receipts from RTB to pay off debts before spending on replacement builds, not allowed to use RTB receipts to fund more than 30% of the cost of a replacement home, not allowed to use RTB receipts in conjunction with subsidies such as government grant or public land, have had to commit receipts within a tight three year turnaround or lose them to the Treasury

reductions in central government grants to local authorities for the purpose of building new stock [3]

rules changes that effectively put central government in charge of local housing budgets [4]

reductions in rents LAs are allowed to charge

compulsory sales of land owned by local authorities [5]

central government limits on the freedom of LAs to borrow

Now housing associations and other social housing landlords (e.g. the NHS and the military) will likely face similar problems with building new properties since the Right to Buy was extended to them.

Scotland abolished the Right to Buy in 2014 and it will end in Wales in January 2019, so we'll have a 'natural experiment' to see whether social housing stock will recover in those countries.

As to why, the Thatcher government (and successive Conservative governments) purported to want to restructure the relationship between the individual and the state. They said the state owned too much, people had a right to own their homes, the pride of ownership would reduce urban deterioration and ownership would increase labour mobility. But there were Conservatives who believed that making more people owner-occupiers would destroy British 'socialism'. One even proposed giving away social housing to the secure tenants.

Right to Buy is the most expensive privatisation in UK history, it is the largest transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector - more than 2m properties sold at an average net loss.

[1] " it is certain that reform of the RTB scheme would significantly help the council sector address the current shortfall of homes, both overall and in most individual local authority areas. Taking everything into account only one in five (21%) of the authorities who participated in our research said that they currently expect to be able to replace at least the majority of the homes they have sold. By contrast almost three quarters (73%) said that they only expect to replace half or fewer, including one in 10 (12%) who said that they will not be able to replace any at all. http://www.cih.org/resources/PDF/Policy%20free%20download%20pdfs/Keeping%20pace%20-%20replacing%20right%20to%20buy%20sales.pdf

[2] At the time of writing, if you live in a house you get a 35% discount if you’ve been a public sector tenant for between 3 and 5 years, after 5 years the discount goes up by 1% for every extra year you’ve been a public sector tenant up to a maximum of 70%. In a flat you get a 50% discount if you’ve been a public sector tenant for between 3 and 5 years, after 5 years the discount goes up by 2% for every extra year you’ve been a public sector tenant up to a maximum of 70%. The maximum discount is £80,900 in England, except in London where it’s £108,000. https://www.gov.uk/right-to-buy-buying-your-council-home/discounts

[4] "By explicitly ring-fencing housing revenue accounts and controlling these net additional subsidies, central government was effectively able to impose external budget constraints on local authorities. In economic terms, therefore, local council housing budgets have effectively been set exogenously by central government and unaffected (at least directly) by revenues arising from council house sales." https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/BN162.pdf

Its worth noting that the "private sector" beneficiaries were the individual purchasers rather than big companies, which is what people usually mean when they complain about the "private sector" benefiting from the public purse.
– Paul JohnsonAug 19 at 16:45

@PaulJohnson beneficiaries include the purchasers, who are owner-occupiers or become landlords themselves (an estimated 40% of the properties are now in the private rented sector and a similar proportion of housing benefit claimants live in private rental properties that were purchased under RTB, i.e. more public money to private hands). The mortgage lenders benefit too. And there has been some exploitation of the scheme: 'incentive' companies offer £5k to £25k for the purchaser to move out so that the company can rent out the property at market value and buy it after three years.
– LagAug 19 at 18:41

"Between the late 1940s and late 1950s councils built more homes than the private sector. Right up to the late 1970s local authorities were building 100,000 homes a year. But with the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 housebuilding by local authorities fell.

Useful information, but they did stop buiding homes, even if they later still did restart again.
– gerritNov 24 '16 at 22:54

@gerrit Well, it depends how do you define "stop building homes". Do you mean zero planned houses for building all over UK at a certain moment? Or do you mean just a pause for the house building by the state, until the bureaucracy followed its route?
– Paul EgnahcxekcatsNov 25 '16 at 14:39

3

You claim it just resurged. I tried to look for a footnote "numbers are in thousands" or so, in the table, but didn't find any, so the table you link shows that housebuilding in the UK is essentially zero, with councils building less than 2000 homes nationwide per year.
– gerritAug 17 at 9:37

1

I mean council house building is essentially zero. I've updated the question. Your post does not answer the question.
– gerritAug 17 at 10:20

There was'not enough agricultural land to feed ourselves in 1940s,there's a lot less today. 40 million people in 1940 about 60 million +today, buidling more and more houses,roads factories ect,is .? You work it out.?......?

Welcome to Politics.SE. Although this may contain a good seed for an answer, the way it is written, it rather looks as an opinionated comment. Consider adding some details and back your point with credible references. And maybe remove rhetoric questions. Note also that the question is about 1980's onward. If your point were true, the decline would occur earlier as well.
– bytebusterJun 1 '16 at 20:21

3

Was this the stated reason to stop building homes? And is there any stated aim that the UK should feed itself?
– gerritJun 2 '16 at 15:03

The UK may have to feed itself after Brexit if it continues like this, but that's an entirely different story ;-)
– gerritAug 18 at 14:08